August 31, 2011

Figure 1 shows the year of the worst 6-12 month drought for various areas in Texas. For 55.8 percent of the state, the current drought is the worst on record. No other drought was as bad in so many places. The previous standard for a one year drought, 1925, can now only be considered the worst ever in 14.6 percent of the state.

For July, the statewide Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI), which is a measure of dryness that takes both temperature and moisture into account, recorded its lowest ever reading. This surpassed the worst July readings for 1918, 1925 and 1956, the droughts of record in Texas.

August 31, 2011

Here’s the Nature podcast interview with Jasper Kirkby, author of the new study that has denialists all atwitter (again) over cosmic rays.

Briefly, the theory is that cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, and when colliding with gas molecules create tiny cloud seeding particles, (“cloud condensation nuclei”) and thus, so the theory goes, could increase cloud cover.

Therefore, so the theory goes, when the sun is in an active state, solar magnetic fields are strong, shielding the earth from cosmic rays, not as many clouds form, making it warmer – even warmer than it would be from the more active sun.

In periods such as the Maunder Minimum, a period of very few sunspots from 1645 to 1715, solar activity would have been low, thus, – ->lower magnetic fields –> letting in more cosmic rays —> producing more clouds
—> cooling the planet.

Voila. The Little Ice Age.

Recently, experiments were undertaken by Dr. Kirkby (interviewed above) at the European Atom smasher facility, – CERN – to learn more about the particle interactions that might validate this theory. The publication of his recent paper on the results has been bouncing around in the denialosphere as yet another “final nail in the coffin of man-caused global warming”.

August 30, 2011

Raw video: Flood damage in Fleischmanns, NY.

AP:In the wake of Hurricane Irene, there are signs of the storm’s brutal force all around Fleischmanns, New York. Irene has been blamed for at least 40 deaths in 11 states, including one in Fleischmanns.

August 30, 2011

2. The denialist media takes every opportunity to distort, obfuscate, completely miss, (or, in this case, all of the above) a point.

We got another reminder the other day after a short, off hand remark by Al Gore became the topic of spittle flecked outrage on Fox News and other alternative reality venues. In discussing the current polarized atmosphere around the topic of climate change, Gore made the comparison to the way a younger generation in the 60s challenged the existing conventions of southern racism – and went on to urge people to challenge errors, lies and manufactured misconceptions around climate.

The relevant clip above is only 3 minutes long, and it came towards the end of an hour long (very worthwhile) interview that can be seen in its entirety here.

It’s hard to believe that your average Fox talking head would have the time or inclination to actually sit through something as wonky as that. But, somewhere in the bowels of Fox News, we’re told, there is a “brain room”, where, presumably, gray matter is kept under lock and key, and only accessible to those with the highest clearance. That must be the place where boring “ideas” and “facts” are scrutinized and, occasionally, doled out in tiny, carefully contextualized and scripted bits to the empty talking heads that populate the Fox’s intellectual wasteland. Watch the manufactured outrage here.

One reason the min-tempest struck home is that I just saw “The Help” – a summer movie based on the bestselling novel (and produced by Participant, the same group that produced “An Inconvenient Truth”) – which convincingly re-creates the atmosphere of institutionalized segragation and unconscious racism in 1963 Jackson, Mississippi.

August 30, 2011

In my recent blog entry Texas Drought: A Fingerprint, I illustrated how unusual this year’s precipitation has been compared to previous years. Now, with just a few days left in August, I’d like to show you just how unusual the combination of summer temperatures and summer rainfall has been.

Here is a plot of Texas average summer (June-August) temperature versus Texas summer precipitation. Records go back to 1895. (In the first graph above..PS) ..I’ve left off 2011.

Can you spot the outlier? The year 2011 continues the recent trend of being much warmer than the historical precipitation-temperature relationship would indicate, although with no previous points so dry it’s hard to say exactly what history would say about a summer such as this one. Except that this summer is way beyond the previous envelope of summer temperature and precipitation.